


pity the child

by kathillards



Category: Kamen Rider Build
Genre: Gen, spoilers for ep 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 19:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12991137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: When she finds out, Misora spends the entire night wide awake, sitting at the counter of the café with her eyes unseeing. —-  (The aftermath of three children who were groomed, one by one by one, to become weapons.)





	pity the child

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for episode fourteen and blood stalk's identity, don't read if you haven't gotten there yet. warnings for what is essentially children dealing with the revelation of parental emotional abuse.

When she finds out, Misora spends the entire night wide awake, sitting at the counter of the café with her eyes unseeing. The lights are hazy and golden around her; when Ryuga goes to check on her, it feels like the café itself has put a spotlight on her in its unending cruelty. Like a trick from Blood Stalk.

“Aren’t you going to sleep?” he asks her hesitantly.

She hasn’t spoken to anyone since they told her the truth, and she doesn’t speak to him now, only hugs her giant plush tighter to her chest to mask the sharp inhale he can nonetheless hear in her throat.

“It’s gonna be morning soon,” Ryuga tries again, nudging at her shoulder. Normally, this would elicit a response on the level of him being threatened with scissors, but again, there is nothing. “Can you at least say something? Anything?”

Misora turns her wide, brown gaze to him and, not for the first time, he sees just how terribly young she is, for all that has happened to her. The fragility lining her face beneath the sharpness and irritation she carries around her like a shield.

“He almost killed you,” is what she says when she finally speaks, and her voice is hard in the center but soft around the edges, the words full of raw, unmitigated anger.

Ryuga opens and closes his mouth a few times before settling on a lame, “But he didn’t.”

Misora turns away from him.

 

 

 

The Nebula Gas had done a number on his memories, too, turned them hazy and distant, like he’s reaching through fog to catch them, but he does, at least, remember them. Can even bring them up in his mind’s eye if he focuses hard enough.

In one, he remembers being little, about eight or nine, and running around in his backyard until the sun starts to set and his father comes out to fetch him.

His father is a tall, sturdy man, with the same square jaw and chin he had passed onto his son. He leans down and stops Ryuga from running and asks him with a smile, “Did you get stronger today, Ryuga?”

“Yeah!” Ryuga says, eyes wide and cheeks flushed with exhilaration. “I’m gonna be so strong! I’m gonna be a fighter!”

His father pats him on the head, then takes his hand to lead him back inside for dinner. “Don’t ever stop trying to get strong, Ryuga. No matter how many people try to make you weak. You’ll always be stronger than them.”

“Always,” Ryuga promises, both himself and his father, and beams as they head back into the warmth of the house.

 

 

 

He catches Sento staring at the staircase every once in a while, even though all four of them are already in the lab. Waiting for someone else to come down. Waiting for a memory he knows is false. A person he knows won’t be coming back.

“Hey,” Ryuga says, bumping his elbow into Sento’s to startle him out of his trance. “Don’t get all mopey on me now.”

Sento cracks a half-smile, but it fades into serious thought quickly, his brow furrowing as he stares at Ryuga. He has this unsettling scientist’s gaze, that always makes Ryuga feel like he’s being dissected from the outside in.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Sento asks. It’s unclear what he means—the current plan, the next fight, the Cross-Z driver sitting heavy in his back pocket. Whatever he means, Ryuga knows the answer.

“What d’you take me for, a weakling?” he demands, jostling Sento as he moves past him. Sento rolls his eyes and follows him back into the heart of the lab, away from the staircase, away from Misora sitting on her bed, unsleeping.

“Just making sure,” Sento says softly, and his gaze darts back to Misora.

Ryuga looks at her, too, and at the stairs, and at all the holes in the air of the laboratory, where the owner had once filled them. He looks back at Sento, and feels his heart break for the two people who’d lost their family, an extra crack over the exact place it had broken when Kasumi had died in his arms.

“Hey,” he says, his voice low and so serious that Sento pauses to actually look at him. “Next time we meet Stalk, I’m gonna bring him in. I promise.”

Sento’s answering smile is tentative, doubtful, but Ryuga takes it as a blessing anyway.

 

 

 

His aunt and uncle had given him a set of toy soldiers as a birthday present when he was ten. He remembers vividly how they had looked, gleaming wood in their plastic wrapping, carefully hand-painted and carved. Though the rest of the memories—his father’s smile, his mother’s laugh, his own exclamation of delight—are cloudy, he remembers the soldiers.

He remembers his mother leaning down to pick one up and tell him, “Be careful with these, okay? You don’t want them to break.”

“You’re very strong,” his father adds, ruffling his hair. Ryuga bounces away from the touch, swatting at his hand, and laughs. “You could easily break them. But you have to remember your strength.”

“I won’t break them,” Ryuga says somberly, and takes the toy soldier from his mother. “I’ll always be good to the heroes.”

“That’s my boy,” says his father, and his mother sweeps him into a hug, the warmth lingering in the memory long after they’re both gone and Ryuga has lost the toy soldiers to time.

 

 

 

He thinks he should probably find a better place to sleep than on the floor of the lab, but at this point, he can’t be bothered. Misora takes the bed, even though she rarely sleeps these days, and Sento has an incredible gift to fall asleep no matter where he is, and often does so in his chair or even standing up at the board. Sawa, of course, has her own place, though she stays over in the lab more and more, without ever actually sleeping there.

Ryuga finds himself away more often than not, staring up into the darkened room and listening to the quiet sounds of Misora’s breathing, of Sento scribbling away in his planning notebook, to the muffled sob from the direction of the bed, to Sento’s pencil slowing to a stop as his thoughts undoubtedly wander far away from the lab.

It’s nights like this, still and sleepless, that he hates Blood Stalk the most.

He gets up, startling Sento a bit, but neither of them say a word. Sawa isn’t here tonight; usually she sits at Misora’s bedside and keeps her company through the nights when she’s here, so Ryuga takes her place on the chair and watches Misora, who’s lying down without actually sleeping.

“You don’t have to do that,” she says finally, quiet and hurting.

“I can’t sleep,” Ryuga admits. “Can you?”

Misora stays where she is a moment, and then she sits up, pulling her legs up and around to dangle over the edge of the bed. “I’m tired of sleeping.” Her voice is fractured, but full of resoluteness.

Ryuga gets up off the chair and goes to join her at the bed. After a minute, he hears footsteps from the lab to the bedroom, and Sento stops in front of them, looking between the two of them like he’s not quite sure where he fits.

“Look at us,” Ryuga says, with an attempt at a grin that earns him nothing from either of them. He moves apart from Misora and gestures to the center of the bed for Sento to sit. “Three toy soldiers.”

“Is that what we are?” Sento sits down between them, his knees knocking lightly against Ryuga’s as he shuffles around. “Toy soldiers?”

“You have to be careful with them,” Ryuga says, mock-solemnly. “Or else they’ll break.”

For some reason, this causes Misora to hiccup, which turns into a giggle, which turns into Sento laughing in half-surprise, half-amusement, and Ryuga grins as he watches them. It’s the first moment of genuine happiness he can remember in the lab since—well, for a while now.

“You’re right,” says Misora when she gets her giggles under control. “That’s what we are. You two, being pushed everywhere to fight other people’s enemies. And me…”

She trails off, staring down at the golden bracelet encircling her wrist. Sento reaches over, takes her hand and holds it, palm to palm, so the bracelet gleams in the darkness.

Ryuga says, “You did what was right, Misora.”

She twists her bracelet and a shudder goes down her body. “They— _he_ used you to get to me. To my power.” Her voice tilts and crumbles somewhere around the word ‘power’.

“We didn’t know,” says Sento softly. “We couldn’t have known.”

“If your father is in there,” Ryuga tells her, leaning across Sento to meet her gaze and hold it, “if he’s anywhere in Blood Stalk, we’re gonna bring him back.”

Misora blinks up at the two of them. “I don’t know if I want him back,” she admits.

Sento curls his fingers aroud hers and squeezes. “Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it,” he promises. “Together. That’s one good thing he did for us.”

“Yeah,” Ryuga echoes, and though she can’t see him smile in the darkness of the room, he hopes she can feel it. “He brought us together.”


End file.
